


Time in My Back Pocket (Burn it with Me)

by iloveyoudie



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Afterglow, Bisexual Morse, Canonical Character Death, Cigarettes, Episode Related, First Kiss, Friendship, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, M/M, Parties & Gatherings, References to S7, Slow Burn, Smoking, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyoudie/pseuds/iloveyoudie
Summary: Five times Max & Morse shared a smoke, and one time they didn't.
Relationships: Max DeBryn & Endeavour Morse, Max DeBryn/Endeavour Morse
Comments: 35
Kudos: 47





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> _I've got this time in my back pocket, baby. Won't you burn it with me?_  
>  _You've got those eyes that could take us places that they never should be._  
>  _Go easy on me, oh._  
>  \-- Day Smoker -- Verskotzi --

“Thank you, gentleman,” Mr. Bright took the last pull from his cigarette and mashed it into the ashtray in front of him, “Inspector Thursday. A word, please.”

Thursday’s pipe smouldered between his lips and he nodded as he remained in his chair. Morse hovered behind, hands behind his back and nose twitching to the smoke. It almost made him want to join as Dr. Debryn had, but he hadn’t been invited to sit or been offered anything from the Superintendent’s case as the pathologist had. Instead he stood a few steps behind the men, by the door like a silent sentinel, as the doctor outlined his results on the wounds of their most recent victim. Debryn took extraordinary effort to note the lack of any extraordinary physical and physiological connection between their victims and also make it clear, that despite Mr. Bright’s requests, that he could only advise on the methods of killing and causes of death, not the killer’s state of mind.

Morse had been surprised to see him smoke. Never once had he seen Debryn light up before. Not in a pub or in his vehicle or outside the hospital with all the others. He wondered if this was just social propriety or some sliver of Max’s personality that he was seeing for the first time. He didn’t seem unaccustomed to it, no coughs or excessive blinking, and he held the cigarette with same ease and confidence as he did everything. Even as Debryn butted it out in the tray, there were lazy tendrils of smoke curling from his nostrils, rising in a halo around his head, and dissipating into the air. With a final visible huff through his pursed lips the evidence of the act disappeared.

In a puff of smoke.

With the meeting adjourned aside from Thursday, Morse stepped out of the station doors a few minutes later. As he adjusted his collar and glanced around, he found that the doctor was still there. Debryn stood at the corner of the building, under the overhang as a soft mist came down just beyond. He produced a cigarette from inside of his coat, put it to his lips, and a lighter followed as he gave it a light.

“I’ve never seen you smoke before today,” Morse approached and raised his voice when he got within a few steps of the other man.

Max’s brows raised as he glanced towards the voice. Seeing Morse his lips twitched in a familiar sort of way. Morse had always translated that look as smug amusement, but it was hard to tell, and even harder to know if he enjoyed the expression or found it annoying. With Max, it was usually a matter of context. For the moment, he found a hint of fondness there.

“Everyone has their battles,” The silvering doctor looked down at the cigarette held out between his fingers, “This is one of mine.”

Morse’s nose twitched. Max’s cigarette smelled mildly more appealing than the things that Mr. Bright puffed upon. They looked different to start, shorter and fatter, and he was sure that given a good look he could probably identify them. What was it Sherlock Holmes claimed? 243 types of tobacco ash?

Max noticed him looking and held it out between his fingers. The smoke curled again from his nostrils and through his parted lips and he reminded Morse a bit of a lazy dragon, Smaug on his hoard, a sort of deceptive relaxation in a being who could snap and devour at any moment.

Morse accepted the fag when Max offered it out to him. He took a hit and then gave it a careful look as he held it between his thumb and forefinger. The paper was brighter, the taste strong. French if he wasn’t mistaken.. Maybe Gitanes..

“Finish that,” Max blew the contents of his lungs out into the mist as he checked his watch with a wrist flick. Shaking his sleeve back down, it was the doctor’s turn to adjust his collar against the elements.

“Pub?” Morse chanced, the smoke tumbling out over his tongue in a rather satisfying way.

Debryn seemed to think, he watched Morse’s face and the smoke curl from his lips, and finally made a decision, “Yeah, alright.”


	2. two

_‘I’m a police officer,’_ Morse had told them very insistently when the uniforms came. They’d called it in to CID.

 _‘Inspector Thursday,’_ he’d insisted with a glazed and detached stare, _‘bring Inspector Thursday.’_

Morse suppressed his shivers as the lake water dried on his skin and his shirt began to stiffen and shift rough around the collar. He sunk into his own thoughts about how this could have happened, and how it came to be, and then the dreaded joke was revisited that now felt so true - that it had been because of him. _If Morse was involved 1 body led to 3._ He knew what people said and not even his own ego and self-possession could save him from that truth now. He’d run from the police after Blenheim Vale, run to the lake house, run from some version of himself and still murder followed. A girl in the woods and now… Bix..

Morse was jarred from his thoughts to find the sun was now glaring, baking him, and his clothing crunched unpleasantly as he moved to look up at the shadow cast across him.

It was Dr. Debryn squinting down at him with a halo of golden sunlight, “Morse?”

Morse blinked as he looked up at him and time suddenly accelerated like a film being played in double time. Everything caught up to him, the time he’d spent sat there on the dock with his shoes just barely skimming the top of the water, the floating body he’d been avoiding looking at but also loathe to leave. One part of his brain told him it was evidence and the other lamented his friend. A third reviled part of him just wanted to retch into the grass. Morse became aware of the day's heat setting in and despite the warmth of the morning sun, a gust of breeze made him shudder suddenly.

Debryn’s hand extended carefully, turned over, and pressed to his forehead, “Morse, you’re chilled to the bone. You may be in shock.”

“No,” The response felt delayed, like he’d thought the words several long seconds before they came out, “I’m alright.”

And suddenly Debryn was walking up to him again, but he hadn't quite registered him walking away, and the doctor was placing a jacket over his shoulders. The additional insulation was immediately and appreciatively felt.

“Move to shore, Morse. Warm up. Get your blood pumping. Your Inspector’s on his way.”

Morse let himself be urged to his feet, allowed Debryn to steer him with a guiding hand on the small of his back further from the water’s edge, and he settled at the base of a tree in a bright pool of sunlight under the twitter of birdsong. He could hear the officers haul Bix’s body from the water and set him on the dock, but he didn’t need to look anymore. Instead, Morse shivered and turned his head away, and Debryn (who hadn’t moved away from him quite yet) crouched down again. He produced a flask from an inside pocket, unassuming stainless with a worn leather grip, and he unscrewed the lid and held it out.

“Have a nip of that.”

Morse did without thinking and barely made a face to the taste of the brandy. He took another.

Debryn patted his jacket, produced a cigarette case from an inside breast pocket, and lit one with a puff before he handed it over, “Usually I don’t stand smoking at a scene... “ He glanced around, at the outdoors moving with the early summer breeze - it was a lovely day aside from the obvious, “but I’d say you’re safe from corrupting any evidence. Just mind your refuse, alright? I know you won’t take it easy and I know you won’t rest. So just do your best to be lucid when your Governor arrives or you know he'll do something about it.”

Morse’s eyes flicked to him. He nodded.

Debryn’s eyes were soft, a deep blue he was only now noticing after these years of their acquaintance, and the down curve of his mouth was very sympathetic, “And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth, for whatever you had to see.”

Morse took a deep breath.

“I’ll take care of him for you, alright?”

Morse nodded again, and as Max turned away, pressed the cigarette to his lips and inhaled.


	3. three

Morse sucked angrily on the end of his fag and tensed against the burn of it, the pinch and tang of the smoke, the searing feeling that pushed him to cough. He was too stubborn for that today and tensed his chest until it ached to not let out even the smallest hack at the urge. He'd drank down his pint like it was the cure and his head was still swimming from his charge out of the pub, away from the sycophants, away from half-arsed sympathies and trite greeting card lines. The cigarette, smoked down like it was air itself, maintained his headrush with mental detachment for a while but as his smoking slowed and neared its end, what was left in the wake of annoyance and anger was the barely smoothed edges of his current situation.

He hated funerals. His last had been his father's and before that his mum. He'd never been to a single final resting that he didn't somehow find a way to heap on his own shoulders.. not even this one. He’d also never once heard a sympathy that didn’t somehow ring false in his ears. Perhaps this was just him.

Morse mulled over his timetable. Was it too soon to leave? Would anyone notice? He didn’t often worry if others would judge him but this was a very public sort of spectacle and he was feeling a fragility that was rarely acknowledged.

He needed a drink, which was a rather funny thought while standing in front of a pub, but he’d prefer one in private with silence or perhaps music. He’d rather stare out a window or into a book to bear his misery than to be in group company. He was already feeling the itches of apology crawling up his throat, the inevitable that would come when he faced Miss Frazil again or Strange or Dr. Debryn. It was easier to apologize than to have someone want to _talk things out_.

Christ, he’d rather die than have the few people he called friends try to perform some sort of improvised therapy.

Morse was mid-composition of said apologies, distracted effectively for just a few moments from the anxiety of the entire thing, when he was interrupted by a scuff of shoes on the stones beside him and the cigarette held loosely between his fingers being plucked straight out of his hand.

“These things will kill you,” Came Dr. Debryn’s teasing drawl.

“Seems these days, almost anything can,” Morse lifted his brows and glanced at the doctor just as the cigarette was put between his lips and drawn upon.

“We’re all chugging towards our ends at the standard rate of twenty four hours per diem...” Max blew his smoke away.

Morse watched him take another drag, long and slow, “Rather tasteless humour for a funeral.”

“To assume either of us has taste is very generous at this point, Morse,” Max gave him a wry smile and Morse found the knot in his chest had loosened.

“I just quit these you know,” Max held out the remainder of the thing.

“Consider this you quitting again,” Morse plucked it back and drew on it heavily, sucked down the remainder until the burn singed his first knuckle and he hissed and dropped it to be crushed underfoot, “Ought to stop myself. Bloody french women…”

“C’est si bon,” Max said.

Morse snorted and moved past that, “As if I need more bad habits.”

“You strike me as rather a fan of them.”

Morse cast the doctor a glance from the corner of his eye and smiled small, “Any one of which may put me in the ground, remember.”

Max smiled himself, “Twenty-four hours per diem, Morse.”

They both chuckled and Morse looked at his shoes. It dawned on him that even after his display inside the pub, that Max hadn’t asked about it. Hadn’t asked about his feelings. Hadn’t seemed to expect an apology.

“Do you need a ride? I think I’ve reached my own quota of goodbyes for the day.”

Morse studied his face, his complicated expression, so different here with him now than it was in his morgue or his office or scene side. Even if his dark suit was foreign seeming, the sleek black necktie depressing in lieu of the usual bow. Morse found a relief in having him beside him now, a presence he was grateful for, a person who knew when to push and when to leave him as he was.

“I do. Thanks.”

It meant more than he could say.


	4. four

Morse wondered at the pub around him. It was packed to the gills with loud merry makers, police and hospital workers, and employees of all offices and departments adjacent. When he’d first joined the force here in Oxford it had been a smaller gathering at Christmas time but in the years that followed people had grown closer and friends groups had intermixed and mingled and people who made connections easily, people like Jim Strange, had found their group of intimates had doubled - if not tripled - in size. 

Morse knew most by face, if not name, and his pleasantries had been exchanged before he’d sat in a corner booth with Inspector Thursday and Dr. Debryn, until Thursday left to be with his family. A few nurses had joined and chatted them up and Morse was always happy to entertain a conversation with a few pretty girls, but inevitably they also left - each placing a kiss on Max’s cheek before they disappeared and gave Morse nothing more than a goodbye wave. 

Only a month ago Morse had been afraid for Max’s life, had flown into a panic at the thought of losing him, at it perhaps being his fault that the doctor had been targeted by Jago and McGyffin, but now Max sat a couple gins in with a newly healed split in his brow and pink cheeks from the warmth of the place and the benefit of alcohol. 

“I think I’m going to leave!” Max had to lean into his ear, bump his knee under the table and drum his fingers lightly on the back of Morse's hand to catch his attention as he spoke up. 

Morse drained his pint, “I’ll go with you!” 

And the two of them rose and shifted around the table and made their way out. Morse eased out of the door and slung on his coat against the chill, passing patrons going in and out, and moments later Max appeared with a fresh lipstick mark on his cheek and a cigarette behind his ear with no explanation. 

“I need a taxi,” Max noted, tugging his own coat tight around his solid body. 

“No driving?” 

“Irresponsible,” Max snorted, “I’d planned on drinking.” 

He was certainly a bit watery around the edges, pink ears and pink cheeks and glassy eyes. His smiles were easier and looser and Morse fished for any memory where the doctor had ever seemed more than lightly under the influence. 

“Well there won’t be a taxi down here,” Morse gestured for them to make their way to the main road, “I’ll walk you.” 

“If you’d like,” Max smiled, reached to scratch an ear, and found the cigarette there tumbling into his hand, “Christ. Where did this come from?” 

Morse hadn’t an answer but judging by the lipstick still on Max’s cheek, it was likely one of the hospital girls. Instead of saying anything he watched the doctor put the fag between his lips, fish out his lighter from the usual place, and light it. 

He wasn’t sure when he became overly fixated on the man’s mouth, perhaps when he’d become overly fixated with the rest of him. He wasn’t sure if it had been slow building, in the back of his thoughts and on the back burner of his life as the years went on, but something about this year in particular had set him on a path that read something like unrequited enamouration. It had been part of the pain of Max being kidnapped, thinking it had been because of him, because someone had noticed his fondness, had seen him drop by the doctor’s home and settle in for chats and wine in the garden. He felt responsible and guilty and now he simply wanted to milk as much time as he could from the friendship they had built. 

“You’re very popular with the ladies,” Morse said, gesturing to his cheek and miming it being cleaned, “What’s your secret?” 

Max blinked, touched his face, and finding red on his fingers fished out a handkerchief to clean his face, “I suppose they know they’ve nothing to worry about with me.” 

Morse turned that over. Max, it seemed, wasn’t sure if he’d gotten the point, “Because when you remove _certain factors_ from the equation-” 

Morse felt warm. The idea of Max’s preferences was hardly embarrassing, not when he had both suspected and hoped, but it wasn’t usually the sort of thing the pair of them talked about. 

“-they know they have a friend in me with no expectation of anything else.” Max took another drag of his cigarette and Morse watched the bow of his lips again, pink and full and wonderfully defined. 

“Still,” Morse gave him a crooked smile, “That was a lot of kisses.” 

“My mother always told me I had very kissable cheeks,” Max gave him a small smile of his own. 

Morse wouldn’t dare to debate it. 

Max pulled the cigarette from his lips, “You know cigarettes are a bit like kisses. Everytime someone takes a puff there’s transference of spittle, of bit of skin, germs..” 

Morse made a face that Max chuckled. 

“Don’t turn your nose up, Morse,” Max bumped him with a shoulder casually, “I heard you’re very generous with your bits of skin and germs when it comes to the fairer sex..” 

“Starting to rethink that, the way you make it sound-” Morse laughed. 

“Oh,” Max blew his smoke into the air just as they got to the main road, “I think it’s romantic. It’s intimacy. How much closer can you get to someone than to share with them… to say I trust you and here’s a bit of myself with it? For the other party to accept it - to want those bits of you -” 

Morse and Max had never much talked about romance except in fleeting bursts around crime scenes, always tinged with sorrow or regret. Now all he could think about were the few times over the years they had shared a cigarette. 

“Shit..” Max spotted a taxi and burst into surprising movement to flag it down. 

Morse joined him with a few loping strides that took him a few steps into the road and forced the taxi to stop. He opened the door for Max without thinking and doctor smiled at him with a nod of thanks. 

“This’ll be me then,” Max had a leg in the door before he saw the tiny hand drawn sign in the window that said ‘No Smoking Please!’, “Finish this for me, will you?” 

Morse took it, watched Max drop into the cab’s back seat, and leaned down to give him a goodbye before the car pulled away, “Merry Christmas Max.” 

“Merry Christmas, Morse,” He gave him another smile, “Enjoy Italy. Take a few pictures, will you?” 

And with that he was gone, and Morse was left with a smouldering cigarette and a tumbling stomach, and as he put the smoke to his lips the thought of an indirect kiss. 


	5. five

Morse decided to have a flatwarming. It was the sort of thing that was normal for most people, but Morse was not most people and the past year had not exactly been his best when it came down to his social ties. It wasn’t much about him having people bring him things, though he did need quite a bit to fill the space, but more about bringing his friends back into his life. Healing rifts.

It wasn’t foolproof, but he hoped it may help.

And they came. Jim Strange walked delicately after his stabbing and subsequent hospital stay. He brought a bottle and gifted Morse a brand new toolbox full of tools and wrapped with a bow. He didn’t seem to hold anything against Morse, not about how their last year at work had been or his impending transfer, not even about his ill advised liaison with Violetta and Ludo.

The Thursday’s came as well, Mrs. Thursday with too many containers of food packaged up for him and Inspector Thursday behind her with a warm handshake and a kind word. It was more than he deserved, he knew it, for the man having had to haul himself to Italy to save Morse again from a disaster of his own making.

Mr. Bright came too, unexpected but welcome, with a shiny new kettle - everyone could use a new kettle - and a few good references for gardeners and char women in case he needed a bit of help with the upkeep of the house.

There were a few people from his choir and a few more from work, and a bit later in the day - straight from the hospital it seemed - came Max Debryn looking very much the same as he always did, but with better gifts. A new pressing of _Tannhäuser_ and an offer of a shelf that was taking up space in one of his spare rooms and was the perfect size for LP’s. It would be ready and waiting whenever Morse may need it, and Morse would be certainly taking him up on that offer in the weeks to come.

It was strange having the new place filled with people. He’d never had a place that could fit this many bodies at once before. He’d never mixed his spheres either. He couldn’t help but think of Ludo and Violetta, how staunchly he had kept that portion of his life apart from his work and the people he had, up until then, held dear. He wasn’t sure he liked the man he’d become this year. Disrespectful, surely, egotistical beyond reason, private. Traitorous.

He still thought about them, how shallow it all felt in retrospect, how the months he’d thought he was in love had been a lie on so many levels. It didn’t matter if she had loved him or not, it had never mattered, everything he’d been presented with had been a guise. He’d been a patsy and fallen for it all hook line and sinker.

He wasn’t sure that he deserved all of his friends to have forgiven him so quickly. Some, he suspected, hadn’t.

The Thursday’s had some food and went on the grand tour and after a couple of hours they had gone. Mr. Bright had been even quicker. Jim seemed to be getting on with one of the girls from the choir. She’d managed to get the story out of him about the case and his stabbing. He’d been a hero and deserved to reap the benefits.

For once Morse wasn’t interested in any of the women. In every whiff of perfume and every set of rouged lips he saw Violetta there. In every posturing mannerism from one of the blokes, every machismo laden laugh, every drop of over scented cologne, he found Ludo waiting.

And then there was Max, stolid and reliable and never anyone but himself. Max was grounding. Max and his garden and his continuing struggle with his many vices. He’d spotted him last in the kitchen, holding court with some of his choir mates, a cigarette dangling from his fingers when Morse was sure he’d said (once again) that he’d been quitting. Max with his bow-ties and knitwear. He was a man so unique that none could corrupt his image. Nothing unsavoury could be impressed upon him that he didn’t impress upon himself.

Morse’s fondness and attraction to him hadn’t faded at all. Other people, the women he’d seen, the distraction of the Talentis, hadn’t ever erased Max. How could they? He was ever reliable. Ever present.

Everyone else was smoke and mirrors. Being near Max was like coming home.

He’d been so foolish over everything for so long.

Strange ended up leaving with that girl from TOSCA and the rest followed quickly afterward as the hours waned on. Having closed the door on what he thought was the final guest, Morse found Max still in the kitchen with most of a pack of cigarettes gone and a mostly empty bottle of wine. A scattering of glasses told Morse that he hadn’t been alone, but he was fairly sure now that the doctor was his final house guest.

“I think everyone’s gone but you,” He noted, picking up the bottle and pouring the last of it into a glass for himself, “Not that I’m hurrying you along.”

Max had been glancing out at his flower beds, overgrown and ill managed. Morse had worried more about the inside of the house than the out, but he had a feeling the doctor would be schooling him on that shortly.

“I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I finish this,” Max’s cigarette dangled loosely.

“I thought you quit?” Morse leaned against the windowsill beside him and Max sidled to the side to make room, but it was a narrow window and they were still very close.

“Culture, like science, is no protection against demons,” Max sighed.

Morse didn’t like the implications of that quotation, the idea that Max be plagued with anything he couldn’t escape, driven to smoke. Max had told him once that tobacco steadied people’s nerves but it was more about the repetitive motion, a soothing habit, and Morse - as he plucked the cigarette away from the doctor for himself - thought once more of indirect kisses.

“Hurrying me along?”

“Of course not,” Morse smiled, “Stay as long as you like.”

Max watched him quietly. He could feel the doctor’s eyes travel over his face and to his lips as he hit the cigarette, to his hand holding it, and he observed him back. The shockingly blue eyes hidden behind his glasses, his perfectly waved hair that Morse often wondered about mussing up. The pink bowed lips, the furrow of worry in his brow.

“Alright there, Morse?” Max stole the cigarette back.

“Yes,” He watched Max hit it and tilted his head slightly as he did so, and Morse realized that he also had tilted his head. It was noticed so Morse straightened, “I apologize if I was a right prick this last year.”

“You’re always a bit of a prick,” Max laughed softly, “It’s neither here nor there so long as I can do my job. It was good of you to have this though, a little family function. A little effort can go a long way.”

“Yes,” Morse watched the cigarette finally smoke down low until it was nearly at Max’s fingers, “I’m figuring that out.”

A little effort, a minor gesture, was all it took sometimes.

“You could stay,” He found himself saying as he reached out and caught Max’s hand. His fingers circled his wrist, moved over his hand, and gently pulled the cigarette away so he could mash it in the ashtray.

Max had stilled to his touch, still close, leaning just beside him and when Morse’s other hand found his waist, he turned towards it. There could be no denying the intentions, no denying that both of them felt something.

“It’s getting late-” Max glanced out the window at the dusk setting in.

“Too late, I’d say,” Morse was watching Max now, not the sky. Well beloved. Perhaps not as shiny as other things he chased, but he realized now that everything too flashy - too fancy - too distracting - was usually a trap. Hindsight may have been twenty-twenty but he finally was looking in front of him and seeing clearly, “So you may as well stay until tomorrow.”

Max smiled at him then and stepped forward, that smile that he had such a hard time reading, whether it be amused or pandering or infuriating. This time, Morse felt like he'd been missing something big and obvious for years, that smile - whatever it was - was just for him. And he wanted to keep it.

Max Debryn, always with the last word, he found said nothing in the moment. Instead, he answered with a kiss.


	6. six

In all Morse’s admirations of Max Debryn over the years, he hadn’t ever realistically imagined himself bedding the man. Max wasn't someone who would bother with someone as troublesome as Morse. Max wasn’t someone he had the courage to cross that line with, to endanger their friendship and their working relationship in such a way. But suddenly they were in the kitchen sharing that cigarette and Morse had felt like so much of his life had slipped behind him, that so many wrong turns had been taken, and that today had been the start of a better road ahead. Nothing had felt right or made sense in so long, everything had been a puzzle to be solved or a hurdle to be jumped, but not Max. For all their complication, their unique personalities, everything suddenly became clear and beautifully simple. 

And it had just happened. 

It hadn’t felt like a surprise in that moment, when he’d asked Max to stay, when they’d kissed and tumbled down the rabbit hole. But now that he was boneless and sated, warm and a bit damp but unabashedly content, it was like being struck by a ton of bricks. 

Morse lifted his cheek from where it lay against Max’s shoulder and watched his face. He had his eyes closed at first, his hand brushing idly back and forth across the downy hair at the small of Morse’s back, but his eyes cracked open wide and clear and a nearly unreal deep blue without his glasses obscuring them. 

“Should’ve done that years ago,” Morse hummed. 

“Oh?” Max’s fingers stilled a moment, “Which year would that be? The one where you were stabbed and shot? Or the one where you went to prison or maybe one of the several when you ran off to god knows where?” 

Morse leaned forward and kissed him to shut him up. Not that he was wrong, but he wasn’t going to chance even more of his missteps being read aloud like a grocery list. 

Thankfully Max was easily swayed by the kiss, his complaining faded into a murmur of _‘could’ve fit it in last year maybe..’_ that made Morse chuckle unexpectedly against Max’s lips. There was a splendid sort of ease in this, their same relationship with a new and mutually pleasing angle. Morse suspected that his doctor here may have been just as surprised as he was that they ended up where they had, even if his implication was that this was something he’d also thought about for a long time. 

Morse rolled over to look at the ceiling and tuck his head into the crook of Max’s arm as said arm bent up to play through Morse’s hair. 

“I’m hungry,” Morse yawned. 

“You’ve just had a party and you’ve a house full of food. Didn’t you eat?” 

“I was busy hosting..” Morse stretched a bit, his arm settling on Max’s thigh. It was such a simple thing, touch, but to have known the man so long and only now been given free reign to explore him was like a revelation. 

“And moping,” Max yawned now, a few seconds after the other man, “I saw you.” 

Morse said nothing. 

“I, for one, could use a cigarette..” Max’s hand left Morse’s hair to scratch through his own. 

“Your pack in the kitchen was empty,” Morse finally rolled over, splayed across the doctor, and wormed his way up his body until they were face to face, “And you’re quitting.” 

They kissed again, long and slow, and Morse’s hands found Max’s wrists and held them down into the bedding. 

“What’s all this then?” Max murmured like a very satisfied and lazy cat. 

“Something else to occupy your lovely mouth..” Morse murmured. 

“I’m beginning to see your point,” Max hummed as his eyes flutter back closed again. 

Why settle for indirect kisses, when he could have the real thing? 


End file.
